Rope
by secretmonkey
Summary: Set after the S1 finale. Nicole and Waverly have left Purgatory, but Waves is still haunted. As her guilt and pain weigh on her more and more, can Nicole find a way to bring her back and help her forgive? Angst, angst, and a bit more angst and a very traumatized Waverly with flashbacks to what happens the night of Solstice, though probably not like it'll be on the show.


Even now, after all these years, Waverly still wakes up some nights, screaming into the dark and calling for her sister.

It's not every night, sometimes it happens three or four times in a week and then it might be a month or maybe two before it happens again. There's no rhyme, there's no reason, there's no logic to it, save for the _illogic_ of it all, the obvious insanity of a life spent living under a curse, trapped in the Triangle and though she's out - _they're_ out - out of Purgatory, out of the hunt, out of the _life_ , it's never been more clear to either of them.

There's no escape. Not really. Not ever.

It's taken every day and every night since they fled Purgatory, but Nicole's gotten better at seeing it coming, at knowing when those memories are eating away at her and at recognizing the little signs that it's gonna be _one of those_ nights. She can see it now in so many things, like the way Waverly can't sit still, the way she flits from spot to spot in their apartment, the way she holds an entire conversation but _can't_ hold Nicole's eyes, the way her hands tremble in her lap, vibrating like an echoing drum.

She sees it in the way Waverly picks listlessly at her dinner, scooting the food around the plate, directing a culinary ballet with her fork as she tries to hide that none of it's actually disappearing, because she knows that _thing_ in her stomach - that _pit_ \- will just spit it all back out, rejecting every single bite, just the way they she feels like they all rejected _her_ after it happened and if there's one thing Waverly's learned, it's that it's easier to keep it all from coming back up, if you never swallow it down to begin with.

The first few months, Nicole cajoled her. She encouraged her to try and deal with it and she tried _with_ her and sat with her and even begged her and when none of _that_ worked, she browbeat her, she pressured her, she reminded Waverly that she was _twenty-two_ , not _two_ , but after a few fights - and more than a few broken dishes and food splattered along the wall, like in that one place just outside Butte where they never even _asked_ for the deposit back - Nicole learned to just leave it alone.

And not to go to sleep.

It's easier that way, she realized, to spend _those_ nights not even trying to sleep, not until _after_ Waverly wakes, till after the screaming has turned to sobbing and the sobbing settles to sniffling and the sniffling stumbles its way into something that at least resembles sleeping, something almost _past_ it. It's the sleep of the dead, she's discovered, the kind that rolls right on through both their alarms, ignores a gentle nudge, laughs in the face of a full on shake and 'Waverly, wake up!'

The first time Nicole damn near gave her CPR.

Now she just lets Waverly rest and hopes that this time, when she wakes, it'll be different, that _this_ time the light she used to see in Waverly's eyes - even when they were facing something terrifying and insane, an _only in Purgatory_ kinda mess - will be back and maybe _that_ would be the first step in what Nicole _knows_ would have to be a _long_ line of steps toward getting _Waverly_ back.

She hopes - _every_ time - and she manages, _most_ of the times, not to let the disappointment show when Waverly wakes and nothing's changed but the day.

Nicole's lost count of the number of times and the number of jobs she's had to call Waverly in sick for, always after one of those nights, when the light of day is one more thing her wife can't bear to face. Eventually, she knows, they all give up, every job, they all cut their losses and move on - and more than once a boss or a co-worker or a supposed _friend_ has suggested that maybe _she_ should do the same - and then it's time go again, time to move on to the next. The next job, the next spot, the next home that never lasts and the next dot on the map they've already crisscrossed twice.

The last one, helping out at that daycare near Tucson, barely lasted three months and, really, Nicole knows that was their fault, she knows they should have been smarter, smart enough to realize trying to do much of _anything_ so close to the Solstice was a fool's errand.

Lesson learned. Another one to add to the list, another in _another_ long line of lessons she's learned, seemingly a new one every day since they fled the Triangle.

She's learned that there's nothing she can do. It's taken years, but _that_ she finally understands, _that_ she finally knows without any doubts or reservations. There's nothing she can do and nothing she can say, nothing that will soothe Waverly, not on _those_ nights. There's nothing spell she can cast, no trick, no magic bullet, nothing that will calm her any faster or bring her any more peace. It's not that Nicole hasn't tried, cause _Lord knows_ she has. At first, she tried _everything_.

Kisses failed.

Glasses of water and meds and sedatives of all shapes and sizes were a bust.

Pictures of home…

She only tried that _once_.

Her desperation, her need to try and… _fix_ it ( _it_ , not _her,_ never _her_ ) led her to Waverly's phone, to her three generations old iPhone, one of the last remnants of their life inside the Triangle, to the video stored on it, the one - the _only_ one Waverly refused to delete - the one she simply titled _Then_.

The two of them and Wynonna. All gussied up in their fancy dresses, draped over and hanging on Doc in the Black Badge offices, looking for all the world like the junior prom from hell, except in the eyes, except in the way they were laughing and joking and carrying on like yeah, the world was about to end and they _knew_ it, but they were half past the point of too fucking drunk to care.

Waverly faces the camera, her eyes rimmed red and sunken but there's still such life behind them, still some flicker of belief that they would find a way, and it still tears at Nicole's heart every time that there was more of that _there_ than there's ever been _here_.

"You really think now's the time?" Waverly asks the camera with a cheeky grin and a wiggling brow. Nicole's seen her watch the video over and over again on some nights - some nights that aren't _those_ nights - and she loves the way Waverly smiles when she hears herself, the _old_ her, when she stands her ground with Dolls and gives him the shit and she doesn't slur her words _at all_.

"Probably not," Dolls says, his voice ringing out from behind the screen, the camera jiggling as he laughs and Nicole remembers thinking in that moment that yeah, it wasn't _just_ her.

 _Everyone_ loved Waverly. You just fucking _had_ to.

"But hell," Dolls says and Nicole remembers him holding up his beer in salute, she doesn't need to see the video jiggling to remember the way he stumbled and laughed at himself. "Right time, wrong time, doesn't matter, right? We're all probably gonna die tomorrow anyway."

There's a moment, a _heartbeat's_ worth of silence and then they laugh. All of them. Like it's the funniest shit they've ever heard, like it's insane and ridiculous and probably _true_.

There's Doc, chuckling in that way only a man who's already faced that particular demon and won (though he might have argued the victory) can. And Wynonna, that brave in the face of fucking _everything_ bravado, laughing with just a hint of fear that Nicole knew then (and now) was for her sisters and not herself.

And Waverly, her voice lighter than all the rest, confident in that 'it can't really happen like _that_ ' way she has… _had_ … the bright and hopeful light that Nicole swears she saw from miles away, the thing that drew her to Purgatory to begin with.

Nicole could listen to that laugh forever.

Waverly always stops it there, she always hits pause on the video after 'probably not', and then she tucks the phone away and it's like if she does _that_ , if she freezes it there, _right there_ , at that one moment in time, then then the rest… all the moments that followed out in the cold and the snow, right along the line… well, then they never happened, like if she doesn't _see_ it again, if she doesn't hear those words again, then it won't _happen_ again, except it did, it already did and now the only place it ever happens again is inside her head on one of those nights.

Waverly pretends it never happened, she hides away from those words that she imagines Dolls never spoke but Nicole… oh, she _remembers_. She remembers as clearly as anything in her life, the way she felt, the bottle of whiskey in her hand halfway to her lips, Wynonna tipping haphazardly against her, Doc nodding his slow and considered agreement.

It was - it _is_ \- the most clear and crystallized moment of her entire life.

If she was gonna go, she thought - and it seemed a fair bet that she was - Nicole remembers thinking that she was glad it was with them. She was glad she was _one of them_ now because that seemed a good thing to be - Waverly or not - and it seemed, to her at least, a good way to go, an honorable and brave and fighting the good fight kind way.

She said that even. And Wynonna had raised a glass and Dolls had 'Ho Rah!'d and Waverly had smiled that smile that made Nicole feel like she could _never_ die.

Doc, though, he had… _other_ … ideas

"That is the _dumbest_ thing I believe I have _ever_ heard," he said, tugging on his hat and making to leave. "There is no _good_ way to go," he told them but Nicole's never been sure if he really meant it or if he was just… being Doc. "In the end, good or bad or what have you? They all end the same," he said.

Gone.

He was right, of course, Nicole gets _that_ , another of those lessons learned. And, as it all turned out, Doc was right and _Dolls_ was wrong. There was only one body, only one soul that never returned home. They weren't _all_ dead the next day.

But Nicole knows. On those nights?

Waverly remembers pulling the trigger. And she kinda wishes they were.

* * *

It comes, eventually - the end - as she Nicole knew in her heart it always would, when she asks Waverly to describe it for her, what it's like for her on those nights, what she sees and feels and _lives_ through, in her head.

It's during a session with the latest - and probably _last_ \- of the counselors, number ten or number twelve, Nicole can't really be sure anymore. There's been so many, and none of them has lasted all that long, a session or two, maybe three if Waverly keeps the 'demon' talk to herself.

She almost never does.

"What's the point?" she asked once and Nicole couldn't really give her one besides…you know… _demons_. "They're going to find out sooner or later and sooner just makes it easier for everyone."

There's a logic there that Nicole couldn't deny, try as she might, and she knows Waverly thinks she's doing what's best, what's easiest. Easier for everyone, she says and it _is_ easier for the counselors, probably and for Waverly, definitely.

But they're not _everyone_.

But _that_ isn't the point and Nicole knows it. _That_ \- what's easier for _her_ \- hasn't got a thing to do with anything and she knows _that_ too, as surely as she knows this isn't about _her_ , that it doesn't matter that _she_ was the one lying there, bleeding out in the snow, that it was _her_ gun, that _that_ was what triggered….

It doesn't matter that it was _all… her_ fault.

Waverly's sister was dead and Doc was right. Good or bad or what have you.

Gone is gone.

Waverly would tell her - Waverly _has_ told her - that _that_ is all so much bullshit and that _that_ is ridiculous and that she can't think like _that_ \- it wasn't you, she says, it was him and it was her and it was _them_ and not _you_ \- and on _those_ nights, the ones where Nicole hits the wine a little too hard and a little too fast, the nights when it comes time to pack up and move ( _again_ ), the nights when the memory of Purgatory and of them, together _there_ , seems more like a dream to her than a nightmare…

Those nights Nicole doesn't scream and she doesn't cry and she doesn't _need_ her wife to hold her until it passes.

But Waverly does anyway.

* * *

After the first counselor ended… badly… and the second and third and fourth didn't make it past the second session, Nicole knew she needed to do… _something_.

Now, she's taken to warning them up front. Every new one in every new town, including _this_ one.

"My wife," she says - and it's been _years_ and that word _still_ sounds weird and wonderful and like everything she ever _dreamed_ of and like things she couldn't have _imagined_ \- "has something of a vivid…"

She pauses then, _every_ fucking _time_ , like she hasn't rehearsed it a thousand times in her head, like she hasn't planned every word down to the _letter_ , but this part… it _kills_ her and Nicole knows if Waverly ever heard…

It might kill her too.

"She's got a vivid imagination," Nicole says and it's not _technically_ a lie because Waverly _does_ , but it's the things she _doesn't_ imagine, the things that are all too fucking _real,_ those are the problem. But you try explaining _that_ to a $300 an hour shrink who has never seen the pits of hell open up and swallow a man whole.

Nicole _has_ seen it and she still isn't quite sure _she_ believes it.

"Waverly has a very vivid imagination," she says. "And a very elaborate world that she's…"

Stuck in. Trapped by. Locked into and only able to slip out of for days or sometimes weeks at a time before it comes crawling out of her mind and her memory and pulls her back in, dragging her screaming across the line, straight back to the Triangle, straight back _there_ , in the snow, kneeling at Nicole's side, watching the life slowly bleed out of her.

There's a scar that runs lengthwise across Nicole's abdomen, a jagged Mississippi River of a thing, the product of Bobo's errant shot (he was aiming for the heart) and Doc's shaking hands. She feels it every morning in the shower, her hands grazing over it as she soaps and cleans and washes (but never washes _away_ anything) but she never _sees_ it.

When she looks in the mirror - _any_ mirror - her eyes never dip below her chest and she hasn't seen that… mark… the most permanent reminder (besides her wife) that it all _was_ real, not in years.

On those nights, when she holds Waverly until it stops, her wife's hand somehow… _always_ … finds its way there and _that's_ the part that hurts the most, the feel of Waverly's fingers… of _her_ … touching… _that_.

"She has a very… _real_ … world that she's _created_ in her mind," Nicole says to one counselor after another. "And I don't… she isn't… we're not here for you to _cure_ that."

She thinks maybe that will stall them, that maybe that will be enough of an explanation for the demons and the ghosts and the witches that maybe - _this_ time - they can get through all _that_ and actually _help_.

Nicole thinks that _every_ time and _every_ time that's the point when they start looking at _her_ funny, when counselor number five or six or eight or twelve starts eyeing her like maybe they should be angling for the package deal. Treat a wife, get a wife free.

She wants to tell them that _that's_ pointless. That there's nothing wrong with _her_ that a solid week straight of sleep and more than six months in one place and a few bottles of wine can't cure.

She wants to tell them that, but she makes a point not to lie.

Much.

"There's no way that you'll ever convince her or make her believe that it isn't real," Nicole says because, of course, it _is_ real. " _I've_ tried and a half a dozen shrinks with enough degrees to paper the whole of the Ghost River Triangle have tried and it's just… not gonna happen."

They nod - every one of them - and they think, for a moment, and then they ask, and it's always the same question. What then, do you want? If not a cure, if not _treatment_ , if not a map out of the maze of delusions Waverly has built in her mind, then what?

What does she hope they can possibly provide?

There's no right answer to that, no one simple response. What does she want? Peace. She wants - she _needs_ \- Waverly to find some peace, some solace, some way to believe that what happened… it wasn't because of her. Yes, it was all real and yes, it was all horrible, and yes, she pulled the trigger.

But it… she… it wasn't...

What does Nicole want?

She wants a way to make it stop, even if only for a moment. She wants some way to give them both a break, a moment or a day or a week or - in her wildest dreams - a _lifetime_ when they don't spend every moment it isn't there, every night that isn't one of _those_ nights, just waiting for the next one.

Waverly can't go on like this, she can't keep breaking time after time and then putting herself back together again. Sooner or later, the pieces break or bend or get lost and yeah, she's back together, but she's not the same.

And Nicole?

 _She's_ exhausted and she has been for years and she feels like she's carrying the weight of the world _and_ the underworld _and_ the life they left behind _and_ the one they can't seem to start living all on her shoulders and she just needs…

" _I_ need _you_ to help _her_ ," she tells them, every time. "I need you to help her fpast her… guilt, I guess… and find herself again," she says.

 _Because I can't._

That part goes unsaid.

* * *

"The first thing… always the _first_ … is the shot."

The counselor - number ten or twelve or _whatever_ \- takes notes on her pad, her pencil scratching away and Nicole listens, but mostly she _watches_ , her eyes glued to Waverly, to the way she's seemingly gone to stone in the chair, her legs rigid and locked, her hands clasped and unmoving in her lap.

Nicole can't quite remember the last time Waverly _wasn't_ moving, can't think of a moment when she wasn't fidgeting or twitching or shaking or trembling, even in her sleep.

"I thought… I thought I'd gotten used to it, you know," she says. "The sound?" Waverly stares down at her hands as she speaks, and Nicole doesn't have to look to know that her left hand is over her right - as always - like she can't stand the sight of _that_ one, the one that held the gun, the one that pulled the trigger. "There were always guns around, even when I was a kid, so I just… got accustomed to it."

She _thought_ she had, anyway. How could she not, with the way that sound kept reverberating through her life. The click of Peacemaker's cylinder rolling over, another shot in the pipe as Wynonna dropped a bottle or a tin can on the fence, or a revenant somewhere between the points of the Triangle. The crack-crack-crack of Doll's pistol pushing round and after round, the sonic fucking boom of her own shotgun, splintering wood or plaster, sending revenants and hired guns - and occasionally sisters - running.

Waverly had thought those sounds - all of them - had become just so much static, nothing but background noise, just so much auditory debris that made up the soundtrack of that new life of hers and - like the sounds of her _old_ one, like whiskey rolling over ice or the snap of a beer tap falling back into place - they were all just… _there._

But there _were_ other sounds too. "There was yelling," she says. "So much yelling. I remember there were taunts and there were threats and everyone trying to goad everyone else…" Her hands twitch in her lap but then still again and there's a look on her face, one Nicole doesn't quite recognize - and how the _fuck_ can that be? - and Nicole starts to think that maybe this was a bad idea, that maybe it was a bad idea all the way back at 'I've found a new counselor.'

But _she_ remembers that too. The yelling. The voices carrying back and forth across the clearing. She remembers Bobo claiming victory, railing on and on _and on_ about the inevitability of it all, about the havoc he was going to wreak. And then there was Dolls shouting to them, ordering them to hold the line, reminding them that nothing else mattered, that _they_ didn't matter as long as Bobo and Willa stayed on _that_ side. And there _she_ was...

"Whispering," Waverly says, without looking at her. "You were there, with me and with Doc and we were safe behind that tree. You remember it? The giant one, the one with the knothole near the bottom where you left your hat?"

Nicole nods but Waverly's doesn't see and Nicole does know _that_ look, the way her wife's eyes are there, but aren't, the way they're staring at something but she knows they're not seeing anything _at all_.

Nothing but snow and trees and her sister on the ground, a ragged broken heart of a wound in her belly and perfect bloody circle between her eyes.

"You whispered," she says. "You whispered to me that it would all be OK and we were all going to be just fine and I knew… I _knew_ you were lying, but I didn't _care._ "

And then came the shot, the _first_ of the firsts. Bobo firing his gun into the air, showing off, declaring his manhood and beating his chest, reminding them who was in charge, who had the upper hand.

 _I've got the heir_ , he said. _I've got the heir and she's got the gun and you've got nothing but a few minutes left to live._

 _How does that feel_ , he asked. _You don't have to tell me,_ he said, _cause I know, cause I've felt it over and over and over every time._

Every time an heir had stared down at him over Peacemaker's barrel. Every time he knew he'd had his ticket back to Hell punched until the next one came of age. Every time he felt his brand glowing in the night and the burning of the bullet as it ripped through him and every time another chance at escape, another chance at freedom, another chance at life slipped through his fingers.

All those nights - every one of _those_ nights - while she's held Waverly and listened to her break just a little more, Nicole's found herself doing the unthinkable.

Understanding Bobo just a little better.

"That shot rang out," Waverly says, "and it all went quiet and everything just _stopped_ and it was so… noticeable. It stood out, you know? The sound of the gun and the yelling and all that was just… _there_ … but that silence…"

That silence hung heavy, settling in between them, filling the gaps in their line and sinking its way into the snow and the dirt beneath it, like a hundred little graves being dug right under their feet.

 _We're all probably gonna die tomorrow, anyway._

Tomorrow was today and today was the Solstice and all that stood between Bobo and freedom and, probably the end of the fucking world, was them.

"It wasn't enough," Waverly says, her hands shaking in her lap again. " _We_ weren't enough."

Nicole knows Waverly's right. _They_ weren't enough.

But _she_ was.

* * *

"The plan," Waverly says, "was simple. There was _no plan_ because there was no _time_ for a plan."

The Solstice was there and it was everyone's only shot. Bobo and Willa's one chance for escape and _their_ one chance to end _that_ threat for at least another year and that meant there was no time for details and stratagems or calling in Black Badge back up that _wasn't_ a thunderstorm of Hellfire dropping from the sky.

 _The plan's simple_ , Wynonna said. _Kill Bobo. Kill the fucker dead_.

"We had to kill he... _him_ ," Waverly says and Nicole doesn't know if the counselor catches it - the almost slip - but _she_ does. "We _had_ to."

Nicole's eyes flick from her wife to the counselor, to the way her pencil stops scratching across her pad for just a moment and there's another silence, and it's not unlike the one in the woods that day and it happens like this every time and Nicole knows it, even if she hasn't always _seen_ it, even if sometimes she's out there, in the waiting room just… _waiting_ … and maybe those times she hasn't heard the words and maybe she hasn't seen the pause but she _knows_.

It's the first step down that slippery hill, the one that picks up speed as they go, sending them careening down down down to a crashing crushing thud of 'I think your wife needs more help than I can give' or 'I might consider commitment' or 'have you thought of long term medications' at the bottom.

Nicole waits and she watches and she stares at that fucking pencil until - finally - it starts scratching away again and she knows the words are what really matter, that it's those words on that simple page that will determine everything for them and she knows she's gonna have to wait on those.

But as long as that scratch scratch scratch still scratches along…

There's hope.

And she'll take every single bit of _that_ that she can get.

* * *

 _Stay here_. _It'll be fine._ I'll _be fine, baby._

"You told me you'd be fine," Waverly says. She looks up for the first time, done studying her hands and she stares at Nicole. "You said you were just gonna go behind that rock, a better shot you said, more cover, you said, he'd never even see you, you said and you said… you _said_ it would all be _fine_."

The idea that maybe _this_ was a _bad_ idea runs through Nicole's mind again as she watches her wife. She's seen Waverly in every state imaginable over the years. She's seen angry, sad, lost and broken. She saw the fear - the abject fucking terror - in her wife's eyes back when she was just a girlfriend, as Waverly knelt next to her in that clearing, her hand pressed hard against her wound and Nicole didn't need to look down to know the blood wouldn't stop coming.

She could _feel_ it, she could feel everything she was and everything she might ever be slowly pouring out of her side and she could see it all - _probably gonna die tomorrow_ \- etched into Waverly's face.

Nicole saw the joy - fleeting and temporary as it was - that dashed its way across her wife's face when they walked into the first apartment. It was small, _fuck_ was it small, but it was _theirs_ and it was a _home_ and one that didn't need magical protection and one that didn't come with a lifetime's worth of pain around every corner. And maybe they'd only be there a year, maybe it would just be a pit stop on their way to bigger and better and _more home_ but in that moment, it didn't matter.

It was out of the Triangle and there were no demons or witches - save for maybe the woman who lived upstairs - and they could have a cat and they could have a bed with no guns under the pillows and they could have…

A life.

When those nights come, Nicole holds tight to _that_ memory, tight enough to draw blood.

But she also saw the steely determination, the 'fuck you and fuck fate and _fuck curses and heirs and all that_ bullshit' of it all in Waverly's eyes that day in the woods. Nicole saw it when Waverly let her hand slip from that wound, her fingers gone red as could be, and in that one moment, Nicole saw the last bit of the girl she'd already fallen in love with crack and slip away as Waverly scooped her service weapon from the snow.

 _You can't kill me, baby girl_ , Bobo said, the sight of Waverly and a gun not shaking him in the slightest. _Oh, you_ can _bring the pain if you'd like but it won't_ change _anything._

 _I've got the heir and the heir's got the gun and you've got about ten minutes to live so go ahead, shoot me._

 _See if I care._

Nicole saw it first, it was one of the last things she _did_ see before the pain and the blood loss and the wound took her down and plunged her into darkness. She _saw_ what Waverly _knew_ and what Waverly was going to do and she tried - really, she _did_ \- to stop it, she tried to call Waverly's name but her breath was short, the air hissing out of the wound and she couldn't find it and the words slipped from her lips, silent and lost.

But she saw that look. The same one she sees now. The this isn't going to end well, but _fuck all_ , it's going to _end_.

 _Who said anything about shooting_ you _?_

"You said it would be fine," Waverly says, her hands a blur in her lap. "You _lied_."

And, off in the corner, that scratch scratch scratch goes silent once more.

* * *

"It's always the shot," Waverly says. "Not Bobo's and not… the first one. The _other_ one."

The first shot starts it, the other one ends it. It rings out and Waverly doesn't hear it, but then she doesn't hear _anything_ , not in that moment and not on any one of those nights when she lives it all over again.

There's no birds in the trees, no sound of wings taking flight at the crack of the gun. There's no soft rush of the wind as it whips the snow from the ground, spraying over them, dusting their vision. There's no more yelling and there's no more screaming and there's no more _anything_ except the rush of blood in her ears and the short hard brittle way her breath halts in her lungs.

"What _about_ the other one?" the counselor asks from the corner and Nicole startles in her chair, so wrapped up in watching her wife, so tangled in that moment again that she forgot the other woman was even there. "What about the other shot, Waverly?"

"The first one caught her..." Waverly says but then there's the pause, like 'no, that's not _right_ ', but it _is_ , Nicole _knows_ it is and she can see it, she can see the dawning realization - the memory that Waverly's shoved aside so many times until it finally just _beats_ its way out, clawing and scratching and ripping its way through her, all those nights - flitting across her wife's face.

Only this time, Waverly's wide awake.

"It caught her somewhere in the gut," Waverly says and she'd like to be more precise than _that_ , to be more clinical and withdrawn and _accurate_ than 'somewhere' and 'gut'. She'd like to be able to say she knows where, _exactly_ , she put the first bullet into her sister, because knowing might mean that she's thought about it and she's dealt with it and she's fucking _processed_ it and yeah, knowing would mean _all_ that.

But she doesn't know. She just…

Doesn't.

"I couldn't breathe," she says and her hands tighten in her lap, like her chest and she _remembers_ , she remembers the first shot - the _gutshot_ \- missing the target, missing the _head_ because she was too scared and she was too shaky and her breath was rushing in and out and when she pressed her finger against the trigger, she felt the gun jump in her hand in time with her heart and she was off, her aim wasn't true.

"I was going for her head," she says and Nicole can't help wondering what kind of world they've ended up living in where _that_ is the lesser evil. "I wanted it to be quick, I knew I _had_ to do it, but I wanted… I _didn't_ want her to suffer, you know?"

Waverly tried to give Willa mercy. And Nicole can't help thinking how unfair it is that _she's_ paid for _that_ ever since.

* * *

He had the heir and she had the gun and there was no getting it back.

Not without killing. Willa wouldn't just _let_ it go and Nicole doesn't give even the tiniest of fucks what Wynonna might have thought or hoped or fucking _dreamed._ There was no reasoning with Willa, there was no talking her back to the right side of the line.

Whatever Earp there'd been in her when they found her had died the second she set foot back in that tree house and from that moment on, Willa was Bobo's and Bobo was hers.

Family be damned.

Every day and every night for all these years, Nicole's has believed that. She's _known_ it as certainly as she knows her own name or the serpentine path of that scar. There was nothing they could do, there was nothing Dolls or Wynonna or Doc or her could have done.

Because _she_ was bleeding out and _Wynonna_ never would and Dolls and Doc couldn't hurt _her_ , couldn't bring _that_ pain to the woman they both loved, not even to save them all. _They_ just weren't strong enough.

"My aim was off," Waverly says. It's the first time she's talked about it since that day, since that _night_ when she recounted it all for Dolls in the Black Badge offices. Since the moment she gave her first and last official statement while Doc stitched Nicole's wound - hospital would bring too many questions and questions would bring Black Badge - and Wynonna…

Nicole's never known _exactly_ what Wynonna was doing while Waverly walked through it all for the non-record-record. All she knows is that Wynonna wasn't there and the next morning neither was Willa's body.

"I couldn't stop shaking," Waverly says. Her tone's gone flat, like she's reading lines on a page, a script someone's handed her. It's the words, the _same_ words, the ones she said all those years ago, in that same flat way with those same lost eyes.

Back then, Nicole (and Doc and Dolls) chalked it up to shock, to it all having been just… too much for her body and her mind. And sitting there, in that tiny office with the scratch scratch scratch in the background, like the way Dolls tap tap tapped it all out on his laptop, and with Waverly there, in the chair, walking them through it all over again, step by step by step, that's when it clicks, that's when Nicole understands.

Every day, every smile, every laugh, every tear and every moment they've shared since the day they packed up her truck and drove the hell out of Purgatory? They've all been the same. The same as in that room, the same as in those words, the same as in the way she recited it all for Dolls, right down to

"My aim was off cause I couldn't stop shaking."

Shock.

Every day and every night. Shock.

No. Not every night. _Almost_ every night.

The truth, Nicole realizes, really _will_ out. It wants to be heard, it wants to be spoken, it wants to be known and if it has to hurt you, break you, _kill_ you to do it?

"My aim was off cause I couldn't stop shaking," Waverly says, _again_ , and her voice is rote and her eyes are gone but her hands… Nicole watches them tremble in her wife's lap, twitching and flinching and fighting against the truth shaking itself loose inside her. "I tried for the head but..."

The pencil scratches away in the corner but Nicole doesn't hear it and she doesn't care anyway. Because now she gets it, now she understands what Waverly has been trying to tell them both for all these years.

And yeah, the truth will out.

But sometimes it needs a little help. Like a rope left dangling down a well, if you will.

"Waves?" she says, snapping her wife's attention to her. "You told me once, you told me how you learned to shoot. Do you remember?"

Waverly nods, slowly. "My Uncle Curtis taught me," she says. "When I was eight. Daddy never had time to cause he was always training Willa and Wynonna said I was too young… you know her… always protecting me, so…"

Nicole pulls her chair closer, relieved when Waverly doesn't pull back. "Did he just line up cans on the fence?" she asks.

This time Waverly shakes her head. "No, not _just_ cans. Cans and bottles and old shoes and bowling pins he stole from the dumpster behind the Bowl-a-rama."

"Bowling pins?"

Nicole ignores the counselor's question but Waverly doesn't.

"Yeah," she says, as if it's the most obvious thing in the world. "Narrow at the top and wide at the bottom," she says. "Like people."

The scratching stops for a moment and then resumes. Faster.

Nicole doesn't care about the pencil anymore, it doesn't matter and the counselor doesn't matter and none of it matters except the way Waverly's hands are shaking in her lap, like popcorn heating over an open flame, just ready to blow.

She knows the signs.

"You told me that Curtis taught you all the time, right?"

"Yeah," Waverly says. She squeezes her fingers tight but it only seems to make it worse, to spread the twitch up and out and to her neck and her eyes and her lungs, her breath coming in short punctured snaps. "He taught me day and night," she says. "In the pouring rain and the driving snow and in heat that would melt the wannabe human skin from a revenant's back and it didn't matter."

"It didn't?"

Waverly shakes her head but the movement doesn't stop when she's finished answering. "II _learned_ ," she says. "I was _good_. I hit every target," she says. "Every one, every…"

She trails off and it's all right there, right beneath the skin, just under the surface where it's always been and where neither of them has ever thought to look and Nicole doesn't understand how she missed it all these years.

"Waverly?"

She shakes her head and pushes her chair back, standing suddenly, her legs locking and she stumbles and Nicole moves to help her but Waverly waves her off, staggering back until she finds the wall, pressing herself against it.

"Every target," she says. "Every one, every time, no matter what and…" She looks at Nicole and it's there, in her eyes, the realization of what she did. "My aim wasn't off," she whispers, and Nicole can see the damn breaking. "I didn't _miss_."

Nicole doesn't say anything but she doesn't really have to.

All this time, she's thought… all those nights, every one when Waverly woke screaming Willa's name and clutching at the sheets and sobbing 'I'm sorry' over and over and over, Nicole thought she knew. But she was never inside Waverly's head, she was never there to hear it or to see it or to _really_ know.

"The first shot," Waverly says. "It wasn't a miss, was it?"

Nicole doesn't answer cause she knows her wife's not really asking.

"But it wasn't like _that_ though," Waverly says. She's shaking her head and her hands are fists at her sides. "I _wanted_ it to be quick," she says. "You _know_ I did."

Nicole nods because yes, the Waverly she knows, the woman she's loved since the moment she saw her?

 _She_ wanted it to be quick.

But _that_ Waverly… she didn't see the wound and she didn't see the blood and she didn't imagine the way Willa would crumple to her knees on the ground, the way she would fall with that same soft crush against the snow that Nicole did.

That Waverly didn't _want_ to kill Willa, but she knew she _had_ to. For the sake of everyone, to save Purgatory and the world, she _had_ to. But she didn't _want_ to. _That_ Waverly loved her sister no matter what Willa had done, _that_ Waverly understood that it wasn't Willa's fault, that from the moment the Seven had taken her, she'd never stood a chance.

But _that_ Waverly… she wasn't the one who left cover behind the tree and rushed to her girlfriend's side, she wasn't the one with the blood soaked hands and she wasn't the one who heard Bobo's threats and Willa's laugh and watched the light go out in Wynonna's eyes.

"She ruined us," Waverly says and her eyes squeeze shut and the words burn and she can _taste_ them like acid on her tongue. "She let him loose and _he_ took you… I _thought_ he took you from me…"

Nicole knows the feeling. She remembers the snow, cold against her back and the blood, warm against her skin and the sight of Doc kneeling over her and how she'd thought…

She'd thought the same.

"I hated her," Waverly says. "I _hate_ her. She came back and she took _everything_."

"I know," Nicole says but Waverly's not listening because Waverly's not there.

She's _there_.

"She came back and she made us remember," Waverly says. Her right hand flexes at her side, a gun grip, a finger hunting for a trigger. "She made us remember and she took daddy from us all over again."

Years worth of shared delusions, shared _assurances_ of the wonder and nobility and perfection of Ward and Willa just… gone. And all that was left was reality and reality…

It sucked.

Waverly bangs her head back against the wall, like she's trying to drive the tears from her eyes and Nicole takes a step forward but then the counselor is there, with a hand on her arm and a gentle shake of her head.

She's in it now, that shake says. And you have to let her _go_.

"That... _bitch_ … took everything from Wynonna," Waverly spits and Nicole thought she'd seen it all, but she's never seen _this_ before. "Everything Wynonna thought made her… worth a damn. Being the heir, being the protector… Willa just took it and she… she _gave_ it, she gave it all to _him_."

The tears come then, fast and hard and Waverly breathes in time with them, every gasp sending a new wave to streak her cheeks.

"She took that and she took daddy and she took you…" Her knees give out and she slides down the wall, crumpling to the floor. "And I didn't _miss_ ," she says. "I hit. Every target, every time, no matter what." Waverly looks up at Nicole from the floor. "I wanted her to _feel_ it, I wanted her to hurt like you did, like my _sister_ did. I wanted the last thing she ever felt in this world to be _pain_."

Nicole holds her ground and doesn't flinch. She _can't_. She's held on this long.

"I wanted to kill her," Waverly says. "I _wanted_ to and I _did_ and it saved us all and…"

Waverly puts her head in her hands and the sobs shake her body and Nicole doesn't know what to do so she does what she does best. She holds her, she drops to the floor next to her wife and she takes her in her arms and she holds her and she tries to make her understand that what she _wanted_ doesn't matter.

Only what she did.

And what she did saved them all and cost _her_ everything.

"She took everything," Waverly whispers burying her face in her wife's shoulder, the words hot and salty against Nicole's neck. "And I _let_ her do it. In one stupid angry vengeful moment, I let her." She shakes her head and tries to pull away but Nicole holds fast. "I let her take _me_. All these years and all those nights _I_ could've been the one with you, it could have been _me_ but I let her take that and I'm so sorr-"

And _that_ is just one step too fucking far.

Nicole cuts Waverly off, pressing her lips hard against her wife's as if to say 'Never. Never _again_.' Not one more single fucking time will Waverly ever have to _say_ it or _feel_ it or even _think_ it. Never again will _Nicole_ let Willa take one more thing from the woman she loves. That kiss, the first one _they've_ shared since before the clearing and before the shot and before _all_ of it, is hard and unyielding and… _demanding_.

You will not leave, it says. Not again. You will not go cause you're here and you're with me and you're never going again, not now, not _ever_.

It's a promise. A promise to always stay and to never let her leave and a promise that if she does, if Waverly even _thinks_ of disappearing again, of sinking back beneath the surface and letting Willa taunt her from Hell, Nicole will chase her, she will follow her down to the depths of _anywhere_ and she will bring her back. Every fucking time.

That kiss is a _vow._

It's a rope.

Nicole feels Waverly fight it, she _feels_ the last vestiges of guilt and regret and pain coursing through her and pushing against those arms holding her tight. She struggles - that _other_ Waverly - but then, slowly, moment by moment, she cracks and Nicole sees _her_ for who she _is,_ the one the pulled the trigger, the one that watched Willa drop to her knees and then finished her off, the one that saved them all and has spent all these years saving _her_ Waverly day after day and night after night, taking it all until Waves was ready.

Until now.

Nicole feels the other Waverly crack and fall away, she feels the guilt and the pain moving on and she knows they'll _always_ be there, but they'll face it like they faced Bobo and like they faced Willa and like they faced every one of those nights. And she feels Waverly sink into her arms and melt into the kiss and there's no screams and there's no scratch scratch scratch and there's no more demons and there's no more line.

There's just Waverly's hands, coming up to cup her cheeks.

And they're not shaking anymore.


End file.
